Typical aircraft configurations are designed according to a specific desired performance envelope. For any given design, there are conventionally accepted trade-offs. For example, heavy aircraft, such as commercial airliners or cargo transports, are designed for efficiently transporting people and/or cargo a threshold distance. These aircraft are traditionally designed to create large quantities of lift using high thickness to chord ratios and often minimally to moderately swept wings attached to the fuselage in a high or low-wing configuration. Accordingly, these high-lift aircraft, or conventional heavy aircraft that are designed for efficiency over speed, are commonly limited to subsonic speeds. In contrast, fighter aircraft are smaller and lighter than the commercial airliners and cargo transports and utilize smaller, thinner wings attached to the fuselage in a mid-wing configuration and swept rearward to utilize transonic and supersonic speeds to generate the required lift and to provide enhanced maneuverability. Without vectored thrust mechanisms, these aircraft are commonly limited in their low-speed, short distance take-off and landing capabilities.
Various technologies have been used or experimented with in an effort to increase the lift efficiency of cargo and other heavy aircraft. An example includes the use of powered-lift technologies in which aircraft engine exhaust is utilized to generate additional lift. Upper surface blown (USB) flaps have been used to generate additional lift using foldable flaps that extend from within the wings and into the exhaust flow from the engines, which are mounted above and forward of the minimally swept wings.
However, the conventional powered-lift configuration produces undesirable quantities of cruise drag and excessive pitching moments on takeoff and landings. To counter these induced pitching moments, large tail surfaces are required, which undesirably increase aircraft weight and drag. Another undesirable characteristic of a conventional powered-lift system is that internal engine installation is not an option due to the required contact area of the engine exhaust plumes with the top surface of the wings, as well as due to the internal storage requirements of the USB flaps that fold into the wings. Consequently, transonic and higher aircraft speeds are unattainable with these conventional powered-lift aircraft.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure made herein is presented.